Víðarr Rising

FORGOTTEN CUSTOMS OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLES: ÚTISETA Many of the customs once familiar throughout the Norse world survive today only as names preserved in medieval texts. One of them was útiseta, a heathen practice that Christian lawmakers considered important enough to forbid. The term is commonly translated as "sitting outside," yet the sources never explain exactly what the practice involved. They simply forbid it, suggesting the custom was already familiar to those expected to obey the law. One of the earliest surviving references appears in Laurence M. Larson's translation of the Norwegian Gulathing Law. In its Church Law section, those who practiced witchcraft or "went abroad at night to call forth evil spirits and to promote heathendom thereby" were condemned. The Old Norse text includes the prohibition útisetu at vekja troll upp ("sitting outside to awaken trolls"). References to útiseta also appear in later Christian law codes. Other versions instead prohibit útiseta performed "to inquire into fate" (spyrja forlǫg). Beyond these brief references, the laws offer no explanation for why the custom was practiced or how it was performed. In Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, Clive Tolley suggests that útiseta may have been a solitary practice intended to obtain knowledge from spirits, though the surviving evidence is too limited to reconstruct the custom with confidence. Exactly how people practiced útiseta may never be known. Even so, the medieval sources preserve enough to remind us that it was once a recognized heathen custom, long before it passed into history. Artwork: Wanderer on a Mountain Top (1823), Johan Christian Dahl.